The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-11-12


 now and then he pauses in his num- meries and listens with his head bent to the earth, and then he will bound up from this listening attitude and in- tently examine the various persons near him, and turn away from them with equal audiences to frantically clutch the air, as if trying to lay hands upon some unseen being. He shrieks and starts and walls, and is like one possessed. Usually, before declaring the name of the guilty or suspected person, the payment tor his services (previously agreed upon) has to be made, and in these transactions he shows that his connection with the unseen world has not lessened his in- terest in the possession of the wealth that belongs to the material world in which he lives. He is not easily inn posed upon, either, as regards the quantity or quality of the cloth offered to him as his remuneration. The guilty one being named, the poor wretch has to undergo the ordeal of poison. He must drink a certain amount of N'kasa, prepared from a poisonous bark by the N'ganga. Should the dose act as an emetic, the victim is pronounced innocent other wise, Satan's presence in the man is proved the victim himself being as we'll assured of the facts as his &C., cusers. His body, from the effect of the poison, begins to swell and he is ost tbar hurioI alsuo in coma oococ h ic throat cut before the buriaD or he is drowned"
 It is an open question whether can nibal.sm is really vice of any tribe in the regions of the Congo, though evidence of it crops up now and then in second hand way that is regarded as sufficient by some travellers to take the custom as established. MT. Stan ley, on his second journey through the Dark Continent, at village named KampunZu, found two rows of skulls running along the entire length of the village, imbedded about two inches in the ground, the Cerebral hemispheres" uppermost, bleached and glistening white from the weather. He was told LACy WCIC tDC bhulIp Ol tIC cOhOC
 chimpanzees, otherwise called "meat of the forest" The chief said the bod ies had been eaten. "What kind of a thing is the 'nyama,' or meat of the forest, as you call it?" Stanley asked. "lt is about the size of this boy"- pointing to one of Stanley's attendants, four feet ten inches in height-"and walks like man; goes about with a stick, with which it beats the forest and makes hideous noises. It eats ba- nanas, and we hunt it, kill it and eat it." It was further described as very good food. Stanley offered reward for one of these animals, but it was found impossible to kill one before several days should pass. Stanley had not time to wait for an example of the 'nyama,' but he brought away several skulls of the alleged chimpanzee, which Prof. Huxley pronounced to be those of negroes of the ordinary Afri- can type, upon which MT. Stanley re- marks "Prof. Huxley, by this decis- ion, startles me with the proof that kampunzu's people were cannibals, for at least one-half of the number of skulls seen by me bore the mark of a hatchet which had been driven into the head while the victims were alive" /"
 Mir. Ward not only takes it for granted that cannibalism is a reality among certain tribes of Central Africa, but he sends me the portrait of a we'll known cannibal of Bangala, who is reputed to have eaten eight of his wives; and he also forwards me a set of implements that have been used at cannibalistic feasts. They consist of two spoons and a curious fork. It may be noted in favor of the statement that there is no doubt as to the au- thenticity of these things that they are by far the most primitive of all the articles of native manufacture which have received. They are crude and ugly enough in shape to be the product of the most barbarous tribe, and if cannibalism is Central African custom, one can quite imagine that these might well be the knives and forks of a cannibalistic feast. Ma tives on the Congo charged the expe- dition of Stanley himself with canni- balism. He was seriously obstructed, 1 believe, more than once by the spread of report that the white men were cannibals. The natives here and there had had such terrible experiences from the raids of Arab slave-dealers that they might be forgiven for crediting strangers with any crime, though it is odd that they should select the vice of cannibalism as the special cruelty they might expect at the hands of white men. Ward, in one of his let- ters, mentions an instance of natives running away at sight of his party, the women more particularly making off with their children.